Part-Time Faculty At Wayne State U. Demonstrate Before Negotiating

Several members of the Wayne State University Union of Part-Time Faculty (UPTF) demonstrated in the center of Detroit’s Wayne State University campus to increase awareness about upcoming contract negotiations. Union representatives began talks with university administrators in November. There are approximately 900 adjunct faculty at Wayne who constitute the last group of university employees working without a union contract. According to demonstrators, part-time instructors earn a fraction of what full-time faculty do, and they receive no benefits. In an overwhelming vote in favor of union representation earlier this year, staffers indicated they are ready to join a nationwide effort to improve the standing of part-time employees.

The Union of Part-Time Faculty is now affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers and the AFL-CIO has given the movement greater strength.

In preparation for negotiations, the union surveyed members to better address grievances, according to Susan Titus, the WSU president of the UPTF.

“The most important issue that came up in our survey is more pay,” Titus said. “Many people have taught here for 25 or 30 years and have never seen or gotten a raise.”

According to Titus, part-time faculty currently deal with individual, non-negotiated contracts that extend for only one semester. Many are offered contracts right before or even after the semester begins.

In addition, part-time instructors don’t have the benefit of office hours needed to provide academic guidance outside of the classroom. Titus says she’s had to conduct meetings in the hall or on campus if a student wanted to meet after class.
The lack of health benefits is an issue that plagues part time workers in all sectors of the workforce. Labor organizers like Rayfield Waller believe the ability of employers nationally to elude the responsibility of health care and pensions for part-time workers is the incentive for the current trend to keep them part-time.

Waller was recently elected as Vice President of the Wayne State chapter UPTF. He says that the central issue is one that transcends the downtown Detroit campus.

“The overall issue is pauperization,” said Waller. “Not just Wayne State University, but colleges and universities all over the country are pauperizing faculty.”

Waller is part of the faculty in the Africana Studies department but remembers the importance and stability offered by established faculty when he was a student.
“When I was here, I was very proud of the fact that I was able to meet with full time professors. Fewer and fewer students ever get exposed to full time professors,” said Waller.

Recent victories and successful organizing efforts by part-time workers has given the movement a head of steam. Chief negotiator for the WSU UPTF, Tom Anderson, said that the Lecturers Employee Organization (LEO), based at the University of Michigan, earned a contract for part-time, university level educators in 2002. Anderson says organizing efforts are currently in progress at Michigan State University and Henry Ford Community College.

“Across Michigan and across the United States, part-time faculty are organizing because they’re an increasing number of the people who do the teaching,” says Susan Titus. “I teach in social work and in my department there are many more part-time than full-time faculty.”

The UPTF has also benefited from recent representation by the American Federation of Teachers and the AFL-CIO.

“The use of contingent people in faculty jobs is a growing phenomenon and a growing problem, the way that they’re treated,” says Alyssa Picard, a field representative for the AFT Michigan. “Those people are disproportionately female and they’re disproportionately people of color related to the rest of the faculty core.”

Saundra Williams, President of the Metropolitan Detroit AFL-CIO chapter, told the demonstrators that, “We welcome you into the labor movement—whatever you need we will supply.”
Chief negotiator Tom Anderson expects talks to be lengthy but productive.

“We will present an overview of the situation as we see it,” Anderson said. “Our real goal is to have a contract hammered out and ratified in time before we all leave for the spring, to actually take affect in the fall.”

For more information call the WSU Union of Part-Time Faculty/AFT, AFL-CIO at 313-832-7902 or visit upft@aftmichigan.org